Thermal ageing of polyamide 12 used for polymer laser sintering - influence on part quality characteristics

Polymer laser sintering is one of the most important additive manufacturing technologies for the tool-less production of three-dimensional prototypes and end-use parts. In this process, parts are manufactured layerwise out of a polymer powder by laser exposure. After the building process, these parts are located within a loose bulk powder cake. Due to long process times and high process temperatures, this powder ages thermally, which reduces the recyclability of the material. As a result, mixtures of used and virgin powder ("refreshed" powder) with a mixture ratio of approximately 50% are commonly used in the industry. The goal of this work is to determine the exact influence of different powder ages on resulting part quality characteristics, especially the mechanical behavior and the surface quality. Therefore, refreshed powder with different qualities adjusted by the melt volume rate (MVR) was processed along a defined process quality chain. To analyze the part qualities, mechanical tensile and profilometer tests were performed. The focus is on an application-oriented test set-up to ensure the usability of the results in the industry. The material used is polyamide 12 (PA 2200) processed on an EOSINT P395 laser sintering system from EOS GmbH, Krailling, Germany.